School Day

Sky retrieving a pencil for Ryan

Today we went to school! Ryan was not all that excited to go back to school. The SSD trainer met us,the teacher, the aide and a few other people at the school. We did some problem solving and made a few tentative plans. The doors are so heavy and counter-weighted, I'm not sure Sky will be able to open them. That was a bit of a bummer. The school was built some time ago, so it is not very handicap friendly.

But, as you can see in the picture she is doing great retrieving objects for him. We are going to slowly introduce Sky into school. It's going to take some creativity and a bit of trial and error, but I'm sure they will be successful.

Ryan and Sky did great walking in the hallways and going through doors. They have really seemed to figure out how to walk together when Ryan is in his wheelchair. Now the next thing is to work on walking Sky with his crutches.

Ryan also did well letting other people pet Sky. It is proper service dog etiquette to talk to the person and ask permission to pet the dog. The person can say yes or no depending on what is going on. At first Ryan was saying, "Yes, but let me get her into a proper position before you pet her". That was not working well, because Ryan is so soft spoken that all they heard was "yes" and then his voice trailed off. So we were having a lot of "out of control tail wagging dog" going on as the person petted her.

We found it works better if Ryan says "Wait" and holds his hand up. That stops the person and then he can say "yes, but let me get her into position". He will then put Sky in a sit and have her stay and then tell the person it is OK to pet her. She sits there watching Ryan as the person pets her.

We also came back to the house and put some tugs on our doors to start working with Sky opening doors at home.

Tomorrow we go to a different mall to do some more practicing. Next week we go to the Hershey Zoo and Chocolate World. It should be fun considering it is tourist season! :-)

The other team in training went to the mall to get pedicures today while we were at the school. Kara, Sky's trainer and I never had a pedicure. We suggested to Ryan about taking Sky for one next week, but Ryan vetoed it. Go figure!!